


Clockwise

by Servine (Euregatto)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sun & Moon | Pokemon Sun & Moon Versions
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mild Language, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 09:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11780412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Servine
Summary: The memory distracts him only momentarily – just enough that he misses an order, a command, and his Golbat is crushed beneath her Lycanroc’s rock slide. He’s in that situation again, where all his effort, all his years of training, intense and unguided and free, means absolutely nothing because there’s always someone better than him. He may have given her a run for her money but it was that crucial moment, that final turn, and he’s gone and messed up all over again.“What’s wrong with you Guzma?!”Clearly, a whole lot.





	Clockwise

**Author's Note:**

> A chronological look at our boy Guzma.

**Clockwise**

 

 

“I’m telling you this story so that you may know the beauty of the world.”  
(The Ancient Magus' Bride)

 

 

 

11.

Her name is Artemis and she’s only eleven when her Toucannon’s Drill Peck takes out his Golisopod.

  

  

When he was eleven, his trials were as rough as hers. In the beginning he blamed his parents for getting him one of the wimpiest Pokémon around – specifically, ironically, literally, a  _Wimpod_  – but even as he scoured for and traded for and restlessly trained the perfect team, Kahuna Hala was merciless. Poison, Flying, and Bug types could resist his fighting techniques. Hala was prepared for that and more.

And of  _course_  he was. But Guzma didn’t anticipate the beat down – Zubat’s broken wing, Murkrow smacked out of the sky, Ariados crushed into the dirt with a Z-All Out Pummeling, Scyther fast and strong but ultimately frail and defenseless. And Kukui, the smug bastard, watching it all unfold without so much as a twitch.

And then there is Wimpod, small and skittish and determined and effortlessly back-handed by Crabrawler. It stands again and again and again but each and every time it is knocked back, knocked aside, knocked to its trainer’s feet. The scratches, bruises, smudges of dirt, forming on its exoskeleton like tattoos. Guzma grabs his arms, the bruises, every lashing and every  _“What is wrong with you?!”_  his father has ever screamed at him.

He was supposed to be better than this.

“It’s over,” is all Hala says.

Wimpod hisses at the Kahuna, whimpers then, struggling to peel itself from the ground. Guzma can feel his rage building. “I’m not finished yet!” He doesn’t realize he’s screaming, not until Kukui turns his gaze away and shakes his head as if he’s  _disappointed_. “We can still fight!”

But Hala is stronger and louder and more passionate. “Pokémon are not  _tools_! They are your partners and you will treat them as such!”

He doesn’t return his Wimpod to its ball and instead scoops it into his arms. It murmurs against his chest. A narrow defeat, if he could call it that, as he will call it when his parents ask him about his day as he bandages his Pokémon and fixes them better than he’ll ever fix himself.

“What’s  _wrong_  with you, Guzma?”

And something in him breaks.

     

   

The memory distracts him only momentarily – just enough that he misses an order, a command, and his Golbat is crushed beneath her Lycanroc’s rock slide. He’s in that situation again, where all his effort, all his years of training, intense and unguided and free, means absolutely nothing because there’s always someone better than him. He may have given her a run for her money – taken down four of her five Pokémon while she took down all five of his – but it was that crucial moment, that final turn, and he’s gone and messed up all over again.

_“What’s wrong with you Guzma?!”_

Clearly, a whole fucking lot.

  

   

    

  

Lusamine is the first adult to recognize him for his talent, his potential, his rage and his everything. Lusamine is the first adult who didn’t turn away. Lusamine is the first adult who offered him a chance at becoming something more, something better than what the Grand Trials could ever offer.

But Lusamine, like every adult before, never cared about Guzma.

(And that’s okay, she’s paying the price.)

Artemis reaches through the warping, deteriorating space where the Ultra Beasts have resided for centuries, reaching for him as if she’s undaunted by these creatures, fists the back of his jacket, and becomes the first person to touch him without hurting him.

He flinches. The pain does not come.

“Let’s go home, Guzma. There’s nothing for you here.”

She doesn’t quite understand that there isn’t anything for him anywhere.

    

   

  

12.

She’s already twelve, turning thirteen, when she takes the throne in the Hall of Fame. All five battles are broadcasted live to all of Alola – Guzma thinks he hears something about it airing as a special in Kanto and Unova – and Team Skull bands together one last time to watch.

When he was 12, he ran away from home and met Plumeria.

Kukui is grinning like the idiot he always is, even when he’s on his last Pokémon. Magnezone. Guzma distinctly remembers that damn Magnezone’s Thunderbolt colliding midair with his Golbat, once a Pokémon that could confound with its speed. It’s difficult for him to swallow his pride but he’ll never blame his Pokémon for his own mistakes.

Guzma merely watches as his gang cheers her on. The live feed shows her Kommo-o, the last remaining member of her team, down to its last leg, beating on Magnezone’s metallic outer shell like a drum, all fists and fury and an ancient draconic rage.

Something is thrilling about watching her battle. His heart is ramming against the cage of his chest and he clutches his shirt like he’s in  _pain_.

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath, “what’s wrong with me?”

   

    

  

  

When he was 12, he said something wrong. He doesn’t remember what, not at this point. When he was 12 he was at odds with Kukui, a trainer already turning 16, a much better master in the methods of Pokémon moves. He lost another battle, another chance at being something better, and said  _something_  that he shouldn’t have.

And again, his father set him straight with a golf club.

But Guzma is no longer a child. He has discoloration, scars, various markings that will linger for the rest of his life, long after his parents have left this world, and Artemis sees them when he takes off his Team Skull jacket to let her know that he’s finally done with running away from his problems. First his arms, his shoulders, his stomach when his t-shirt rides up.

“He’s apologized,” is all Guzma can say about it.

She cries anyway.

   

   

  

14.

It’s her birthday. He isn’t sure why he’s standing like a creep outside her house in the dead of night, watching the after party celebration through the windows of her home, but he can’t seem to turn away. There’s probably something  _especially_  odd about a 20-year-old entering a teenager’s place uninvited.

Technically, he was invited. Her Toucannon dropped an invitation in his parents’ mailbox last week. She probably doesn’t know that’s he moved into some seaside apartment in Haouli City, or that he’s barely able to pay his rent because no one wants to hire him with his preceding reputation.

Maybe he should borrow Plumeria’s Muk and get a job at the sewage plant.

“Not going in?”

Guzma recognizes Gladion’s voice. “Nah,” he replies, dropping the gift bag into Gladion’s arms. “Parties ain’t my thing.”

“I see.” There’s a strange quiet that looms for a moment between them, thick and heavy. “You really should come in,” Gladion says. “Plumeria’s here too, with some of her tag-along ex-grunts. They miss you.”

Guzma scoffs. “They shouldn’t.”

Gladion peeks inside the bag. Guzma’s Team Skull necklace is resting at the bottom on top of a handwritten card that reads – in atrocious handwriting – ‘Happy Birthday Champ’. He glances up to the fading silhouette of the washed up hoodlum before uttering, almost to himself, “What’s wrong with you, Guzma?”

     

    

    

16.

She’s not quite a kid anymore. But then again, neither is he.

He’s rugged and his hair is bristled, unkempt. Despite training for the last few years to attempt the Island Challenge one last time, adulthood came knocking and his interest walked out the door before he was ready. He has tattoos up his arms, his chest, one leg, purple as a sunrise, black markings like the nighttime, shades like only Alolan sunsets can offer.

He’s been seeing her only every few months, not that he really understands why he puts so much effort into keeping a connection. Today, when it’s hot in particular, they arrange to get burgers and he ends up paying with some money his father gave him, as if he’s trying to buy back his son’s forgiveness. He’ll never tell Artemis that.

“How are your friends doing?”

“Living their normal lives,” he replies as they sit on a bench by the beach. “I don’t think any of them were as messed up as me, they just wanted an excuse to escape their situations. Can’t blame ‘em. I was happy to help.”

She quirks an eyebrow. Curious. “What about Plumeria?”

“She’s a trainer now, the real deal, y’know? Like you. That Salazzle of hers could burn through concrete.” He picks up the almost perfect sea shell his Honchkrow has been curiously pecking at. “I think she’s happier now that I’m not screwing up her life.”

“Has she said that?”

“I know her,” he says with a shrug. He drops the sea shell into her bag, a gift, probably. “Plumeria's the kinda chick who doesn’t have to say anything. When we talk it’s like nothing ever happened but everything’s in her  _eyes_. Sometimes it’s pity I’m seeing, I think, but mostly it’s just…familiarity.”

“No one pities you.” Artemis reaches over and playfully knocks her knuckles into his chin. “What’s wrong with you, Guzma?”

He just laughs.

    

   

  

18.

He gets a job, a good one, or something like that. His father claims to know a guy who’s looking to upgrade the Battle Tree on Poni island to a Battle Resort, and Guzma is offered a decent salary for maintaining the tournaments by being available as the final battle of the qualifiers. So they finally recognize his talent. At the very least, he can let his steam out.

At the end of the first week of construction, Guzma receives a selfie from Artemis posing with her Araquanid at the ocean side, and he finds himself taking her to dinner with money that is his own. Some restaurant near the beach she was at, her pick cause he couldn't care less, all decent selections and colorful drinks. It's over their entrees that he updates her on finally getting his life back to normal (not that he's known anything else, so normal for him, at least), it's over their desserts that he realizes his face hurts from smiling. 

“At least you’re the captain of something,” she chides as the sun completely sets behind her, earning her a playful punch in the shoulder.

She takes his hand as he recedes. There’s something between them that he suspects has been there a while, nothing he’s tried to overthink or look in to – after all, who in their right mind says ‘hey I’ve got the hots for Guzma’? – but she watches him and he watches her and they’re unblinking. Anticipating.

“Fuck it,” he says breathlessly.

He leans across the table and they kiss.

    

   

  

19.

Lillie comes back from Kanto. She has five Pokéballs on her belt, eight badges pinned to the inside of her jacket, and she’s a striking image of Gladion. Guzma happens to be over Artemis’ place for her mother’s barbeque cook-out that’s got almost everyone together in the first place when the blonde steps through the back door and surprises literally every busy body in the yard.

Hau rushes up to hug her with all the force of a wild Bewear, Artemis is nearly in tears and Gladion seems to be the only person not surprised by his sister's return. Guzma uses this opportunity to retreat into the house for some quiet time.

He finds himself (clumsily) peeling apples for a dessert platter to kill time when he hears the door to the living room slide open, and then shut. He goes completely silent as two sets of feet patter across the floor to the couch.

“So you and Guzma?” Lillie asks. She's become confidence and pride incarnate, much like her mother and a lot like her brother, but her voice is still lathered in her kindness. Her shy, gentle personality is nothing short of relieving, still the same Lillie as when she first found Kukui's lab.

“There’s nothing happening,” Artemis says quickly. Defensively. “He’s a bit old for me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

A despondent sigh. “There’s something between us, yeah.”

“I can’t blame you. He’s gotten quite handsome.”

“I know what you’re trying to do, Lillie.”

Lillie raises her eyebrows suggestively. “He’s older, right? That means he’s gotta have plenty of experience with relationships. You think he’s good with his hands?”

Guzma can only imagine what gesture she makes that has both girls laughing like Gengars.

    

   

   

20.

Hala is sick again – it must be his bones, his age, the ever-moving passage of time waning and waxing like the moon, because if there’s anything Guzma has learned about Alola it’s that they love their nature comparisons – and Guzma finds out through Plumeria. The ex-skull knocks on Guzma’s front door late in the evening to tell him the news with her Salazzle standing tall beside her.

“You could’ve just called,” he remarks, pouring her a glass of cider. Artemis isn’t old enough to drink but it hasn’t stopped her from trying to impress him before, so he's got plenty to spare for the most inappropriate of times. “Missed your boy that much?”

“Guz, c’mon…it’s really bad.”

He shuts the fridge without looking at her. “He’s been getting bad. Ain’t that just how life works?”

"Guzma, seriously! What's wrong with you?"

He slams his hands on the counter. Salazzle flares up and crouches, accustomed to Guzma's outbursts but never beyond defending her trainer with her life. Plumeria could make a move to call the terrifying fire-breather off. There's a lot of different things she could do. Yet she stands, poised, waiting, her arms crossed and her gaze set on the man who used to be her best friend, who still is her best friend without a doubt but he's become the equivalent of a half-assembled picture puzzle.

The silence is unforgiving and deafening and terse. The biting sting of failure has been sitting against Guzma's stomach for years, a long and arduous trudge through the memories that eat him alive from the inside out. That's just how self-loathing seems to work, in the end, with no one left to blame.

"Don't pity me," he hisses, yet his eyes never once meet hers.

Plumeria wraps her arms around his waist and presses her face to his back, feeling him tremble, all his fury and hurt pride and selfish regret. She hugs him and apologizes but he’ll never know what for.

They go to the hospital all the same.

  

  

  

  

(Hala's final words to him are, "You've grown up! When all this nonsense is done, we'll battle once more!")

  

  

   

  

Hala is buried and it seems like every face in Alola attends the funeral. Guzma hasn’t seen Burnet in several years, so he stands with her and Kukui. She even greets him with a hug and a friendly kiss on the cheek. He recognizes several of his ex-gang members dispersed among the ever-growing mass, and then he spots Artemis at the front of the crowd, holding Hau who doesn’t stop crying. The poor kid is going to have a big pair of shoes to fill.

Guzma thinks he sees a streak of lightning over the trees. It’s gone before he can fully turn his head to look.

    

  

   

  

It’s his birthday this time. She enters his apartment, unannounced, while it’s trashed. Guzma doubts he would have cleaned up even if she had called him ahead of time – it adds to his natural charisma, after all – but at the very least he could have made it appear like he tried. Cared. It's been so long since they've actually started dating that he's suddenly  _surprised_  by how little effort he puts into tidying up.

“We should be a thing,” he tells her, his eyes on his laptop's screen. Stupid videos and such.

“A thing?”

“Y’know, like, a thing  _thing_.”

She kisses him, her hand to the back of his neck, and drops a gift bag in his lap. “I thought we were already a thing thing,” she says coyly, heading into the bedroom with a swagger he won't mention but certainly doesn't miss.

“Just checking,” he responds, casually opening the package to find skimpy lingerie  _definitely_  not his size. His hand flies up to slam the laptop closed.

He follows her into the room and doesn’t bring it up again.

   

  

  

 

“I’m moving in,” she says on their two year anniversary. Three year anniversary? It’s difficult to know what she considers as the day they first got together. One year ago today, they went on a first date, but two and a half-years ago, probably today, he kissed her. Or something like that. It's difficult to remember with so little verbal exchange. He tended to simply go with his gut and hasn't given her much other thought.

“Don’t think you’re rushing it?” he asks absentmindedly. She’s already left clothes in his dresser, feminine products and hair care bottles in the bathroom, a coat in the hallway closet.

“So you don’t want me to move in.”

“Hey now, I didn’t say that!”

His apartment is way too small for two people, let alone ten Pokémon. He's got a partner mon the size of a van in the living room and she's got a partner that watches them sleep in the dead of night, ruffled feathers and whispering coos.

She finds him flipping through a brochure looking for condos. Just in case.

   

   

  

21.

She’s an adult. A woman. And she’s leaving.

He finds out through Plumeria who heard through Gladion who was informed by Hau who happened to walk in on the most intense conversation between the champ and Kukui he’s ever seen. Like her, Hau and Gladion have become experienced adults, but Hau has been hysterically crying like a child since the official announcement earlier in the morning.

_It’s not you, it’s just…I think it’s time I left for other regions._

Guzma never considered traveling abroad. He’s been so fondly rooted in Alola he never thought more than once about what it would be like to venture through the other mysterious places in the world – he’s already decided that Sinnoh is, perhaps, too damn cold and would be last on his list.

She’s bringing only her Decidueye. Kukui is taking care of the rest of her team at his lab where they have plenty of space to move around and interact with the other Pokemon he’s studying. He insists that they’re like his children, a suitable replacement for the biological kids he’ll never have – Guzma knows it’s a sensitive subject so he never brings it up, especially around Burnet.

So much for that condo.

  

  

  

  

“Guzma. Guzma, come on.”

“You didn’t tell me!”

Hau stands at the door of the apartment. He had answered Artemis's text about going out to lunch somewhere ( _Malasadas!!!_  he responded, buzzing with excitement) and to be honest, he's still thrilled, but his concern is amounting now that he's at Guzma's door. He can quite clearly hear all the commotion going on inside. Rising voices, first muffled by the walls but now abrupt and unhinged and his hand is subconsciously grasping Raichu's ball. Just in case.

“I’m telling you now!”

“Why didn’t you tell me first? What, your boy Guzma suddenly ain't so damn special anymore?”

Something jolts, slides across the floor. A table, a chair, maybe a couch. It jolts again and slams back into place as if being kicked.

“Oh, I get it. So you fucked up your life and when I have the chance to make mine better you can’t get through your own vindictive self-loathing long enough to let me be happy!”

"I thought I was making you happy!"

Hau winces when a door from within the apartment slams with enough force he can practically hear the frame splintering under the pressure. He considers knocking and temporarily ceasing their yelling but -

"You were! You are!"

"So why the hell are you leaving, then?!"

"To get away from your miserable, sorry ass! What is  _wrong_  with you, Guzma?!"

The front door flies open and Artemis turns, gives Guzma a glare that could freeze a Charizard solid, and then she flings it shut. Hau flinches but doesn't say anything to her for several prolonged, agonizing moments; he just blinks absently, stunned. "We should go," he says quietly, afraid that she'll turn on him next.

Artemis merely nods, soothing out the wrinkles in her shirt. She seems almost entirely unfazed.

"Yeah, I need to get away from this stupid island."

  

  

Golisopod is looking at Guzma with a curiously quirked head.

“Shit,” he asks his Pokémon, “what the hell is wrong with me?”

    

   

 

 

“A drink, dear Guzma?”

He’s always liked Lusamine, despite the hiccup with Ultra Space (an event so far gone that Guzma hardly thinks about it anymore), almost like she was the parent he never had. The incident with the Ultra Beasts has left her…well,  _clear_ , as if she’s suddenly reverted back to the woman, mother, leader she used to be. Guzma wishes her had known her before. When she was the person Lillie spoke so highly of, so lovingly of.

“She’s leaving,” he says, popping open a bottle of peach vodka. Pours himself a shot. “We had a fight about it.”

“A fight?”

The bar in the mansion's lounge is quiet. Guzma recognizes Gladion and Lillie in the back room down the hall, sharing soft drinks and chatting idly about the Kanto region and its many wonders and its growing diversity of Pokémon. They may have recognized his entrance into the private building but they have yet to exit the room to greet him. Guzma thinks he would rather they said nothing to him right now. Lillie's no doubt as mad as Artemis.

"She wants to keep traveling and I ain't about that life anymore."

Lusamine brushes her hair back, gold that bristles with silver in the sunlight. Her eyes crinkled at the edges so that when she smiles her age shows through. "So let her, if it makes her happy."

"But _I_  make her happy too! Shouldn't that be enough for her?"

"She's a bit younger than you, isn't she? She's still got so much to live for, so much to see before the world and all its responsibilities come knocking to take that away." Lusamine sips her dandy little margarita and grins. "You were forced to grow up before your time, my dear Guzma, but that's not something you should expect out of her. Besides, if you didn't make each other happy, this decision wouldn't hurt so much."

He scoffs into his glass. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"She loves you deeply," Lusamine tells him, her hand finding his shoulder. "Let her be happy first. If you try to take that away, there won't be anything for either of you." 

He throws back another shot and sighs. “Age is just a number, right?”

She laughs. “What is  _wrong_  with you?”

Guzma thinks he might finally know.

     

     

   

   

“Yo. Uh, hey.”

He returns home to find her on the couch, browsing through media on her phone. A few drinks with Lusamine haven't left him completely shit-faced but he still leans against the wall when kicking off his shoes proves to be a challenge.

Artemis doesn't look at him. He shuffles over to the couch, sits down beside her, his arms over the back of the rests and his eyes on the ceiling. "How was lunch with your boy Hau?" he asks, slightly slurred but otherwise comprehensive.

"Fine." Type, type, typing typing typing - "You smell like expensive alcohol," she tells him absently.

"I don't drink Lusamine's expensive stuff."

"So that's where you went."

"Course, wasn't gonna mope around."

She grunts, not impressed.

He shrugs. "Look, Arti...I think I’m trying to apologize, but I’m bad at that sort of stuff and it’s real difficult to know exactly how I feel about you leaving and how I feel about you in general, y'know?." He rubs his throbbing temples. "I really don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

She finally sets her cell down on the coffee table and turns her body fully to look at him. "You're a jerk."

He grumbles something incoherent that sounds like "I know, I know." His head pushes into her chest until she's laying on her back and he's lazily wrapping his arms around her waist. "You should go be happy," he mutters, resting his head against the crook of her neck. "I'm happy when you're happy and that's all that matters."

She presses a kiss to his forehead and tells him, with a scowl too cute to be intimidating, “I’m coming back to you, Guzma. You idiot.  _Jerk_.”

“Sheesh,” he laughs finally, feeling her hands desperately holding him close. “What’s wrong with  _you_?” Feeling everything all at once, the tides of the moon and the heat of the sun and the rising, falling, repetitive life and love and soul that bleeds into the waves, crawls across the sands, weaves into the trees; the whimsical presence of Alola like an endless song in the back of his mind.

He's happy here and he's happy with her and one day he'll have both for sure.

Guzma's trial is finally complete.

  

  


End file.
